Faculty of English, University of Cambridge

Medieval Thought Experiments: Poetry, Hypothesis, and Experience in the European Middle Ages

Medieval Thought Experiments: Poetry, Hypothesis, and Experience in the European Middle Ages, co-edited by Dr Philip Knox, Jonathan Morton and Daniel Reeve has been accepted for publication by Brepols.

Here is the book ‘blurb’ to whet your appetite:

An interdisciplinary collection examining the interface of literature and philosophy in the Middle Ages. In the high and late Middle Ages, fictional frameworks could be used as imaginative spaces in which to test or play with ideas without necessarily asserting their truth. The aim of this volume is to consider how intellectual problems were approached – if not necessarily resolved – through the kinds of hypothetical enquiry found in poetry and other kinds of fictive text. Scholars working across the spectrum of medieval languages and academic disciplines consider why a writer might choose a fictional or hypothetical frame to discuss theoretical questions, how a text’s truth content is affected and shaped by its fictive nature, or what kind of affective or intellectual work is required in reading medieval texts.